The purpose of this article is to explore enduring ethical vulnerabilities of the nursing profession as illustrated in historical chapters of nursing’s past. It describes these events, then explores two ethical vulnerabilities in depth: conflicting loyalties and duties, and relationships with patients as ‘other’. The article concludes with suggestions for more ethical approaches to the other in current nursing practice. The past may be one of the most fruitful sites for examining enduring ethical vulnerabilities of the nursing profession. First of (...) all, professional identity, which includes moral identity, comes in part from knowledge of the nursing profession’s past. Second, looking to the past to understand better how events and ideologies have brought vulnerabilities to the fore raises questions about ethical nursing practice today. (shrink)

In their own words: nurses’ discourses of cleanliness from the Rehoboth Mission For nurses of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, cleanliness was often seen as a virtue next to godliness. For missionary nurses, this analogy took on multiple meanings. This study focuses on discourses of cleanliness at one site of missionary nursing in the early twentieth century: the Rehoboth Mission and its hospital, which provided health‐care to the Navajo in the southwestern USA from 1903 to 1965. Data sources included (...) denominational publications, institutional records, correspondence, questionnaires and interviews of the Dutch–American missionary nurses who practiced at the Rehoboth Mission. Discourse analysis was conducted on references to cleanliness, hygiene and sanitation in these texts. Secondary discourses of embodiment in daily practice, initiation and assimilation, caring, ignorance, environmental factors and gendered work were identified and analyzed. The study interrogates the whiteness of the nurses’ dominant culture and sheds light on nurses’ relationships with normative discursive frames that reflect and perpetuate inequalities, discredit non‐dominant practices, and leave little room for competing discourses. It also illustrates a blurring of religion and health‐care, and the need for a reflective and informed stance as a basis for cultural competence. (shrink)